Posts I like: I bet you would like them too

Month: October 2011

Geniousness runs in (from?) our family. I, more than the others (whom I still love dearly), have blinding insights. How do I know that? When I share these insights, people close their eyes until I’m done speaking. (Note to reader: What follows is brilliance at it’s shiniest: if you close your eyes, you will miss the opportunity of a lifetime!) (Note to self: lay off the parentheses.)

After watching this video on TED about making plastic from waste materials and reading this article about harvesting stem cells from fat, I realized that I could bring manufacturing back to America.

Here is my big idea: Stem Cells from Waist Products!

I will build extra-large factories with individual work stations equipped with a recliner, remote control, large screen TV, and laptop. Workers will have unlimited access to tastes-just-like-real-food stuff (now with extra bacon!). Their job will consist of just sitting and manufacturing future stem cells. Thanks to the food industry and their liberal use of corn syrup in 99.9% of all of those products they like to call food, we can create abdominal fat faster than you can spell triglycerides.

How are these jobs different from most other jobs? Well, sitting around in work stations talking, watching YouTube, and checking Facebook every 15 minutes will actually be in the job description. And, hold onto your love handles, it’s a renewable resource! (Look at me, all green and sustainable.)

Writing is an exploration of the terrain of truth, and no one can anticipate its discoveries. It is a journey away from home, in search of home. Only those who travel the road know how lonely it can be.

Writing is both disrobing and dissembling. Above all, we seek to be known; and yet, our greatest fear is that people will see us as we really are.

Writing is a compulsion and a conviction entangled with the desire to have a voice that will not be silenced by death.

Writing is a setting out to sea. The sailor cuts loose the ropes and moves some small distance from the harbor, sails unfurled, only to find the winds have died down.

Writing is death. Long and protracted; blood, the only ink. Not writing is death. Quick but painful; the writer a mausoleum full of dead bones.

Writing is throwing stones across the lake. Some skip, some sink, but all cause a change, circle by circle, moving across the waters in the long, slow movement of thought.

Writing is a light that travels out into the darkness long after the flame is snuffed out.

Writing is the echo of the music after the last note is played.

Writing is a terrible struggle for affirmation. The writer is a small child who cries out, “Look at me! Look at me!” Sometimes no one looks or looks and says, “That? Anybody can do that, and I can do it better. Look at me!”

Writing is a willingness to lay down the desire for affirmation and serve the call to write. Even if this is foolish.

The country here is grotesque, the people savage, the weather awful, the customs crude, and the language a garble. . . . [The people] all carry knives at their belts and you never know whether they’re going to greet you or stab you. . . .

Like you, when I first read this, I thought, “Whoa. He was exiled here in the States?” But as you know, just as many of his works are no longer extant, he himself is no longer extant. And considering the number of angry people out there, it’s amazing how many of us are still extant.

People seem to be getting stabbier. So you’ve got to wonder why here in Wisconsin, we are going to be allowed to carry concealed weapons at our belts or in our pockets or, for larger people, in our coin slots. November 1st we can all start carrying things that make us more confident and sure that we are right, and if you think differently, would you mind stepping over here. I have something to show you that will help you see my point: a gun, or as I like to think of it, a consensus builder. We are the 49th state to get in on all the fun of being not only belligerent, but also deadly. (The very reason I miss Texas so much.)

We are going to need new ways to describe new behaviors. Road rage is not enough. To save valuable time for the psychiatrists who will be defending all those shooters who were drunk and temporarily insane, and also were traumatized as children by clowns with inappropriately sized shoes (and, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, balloons!), I have created a list. I’m using bullets because that’s so apropos, and also fitting:

When the f-word rode into town in the early 1960s on his Harley, with his leather jacket, and fresh tattoos, he was everybody’s darling. People just couldn’t get enough of him. He could take people’s breath away just by showing up in a book or on a stage and flexing his muscles.

Now he looks a lot like the late Elvis. The extra-wide seat on his Harley isn’t extra enough, and his skull tattoo that used to scare little old ladies is starting to look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. Worse yet, have you noticed how often he brings his mother with him when he makes his appearances? I mean, what other curse word does that? I can just hear all the other tough words saying, “Hey, Mr. F-word, where’s your mommy today?”

Eventually people are going to tire of him, and stop inviting him over. I won’t feel sorry for him though. He has a cozy retirement home waiting for him over at the OED.

Half a century ago, the Boomers (at that time more like little Poppers) came up with two culture-changing ideas: let it all hang out and tell it like it is. People today take this first idea way too literally. Have you seen how much is hanging out of people these days? We’re starting to look like a nation of vending machines what with our front and back coin slots.

We Poppers were young, hip, and oh-so-uncensored when we began telling it like it was. We needed the f-word in our shock and awe campaign to overthrow the establishment and bring peace, love, and drugs to the world. And did we ever bring the drugs. If you have enough of them, you really don’t care about the other two. Mission accomplished.

So, the f-word. Go here and type it in the search bar. You’ll see that after a bout of popularity in the 1800s, it went bankrupt, started hanging around sleazy bars, singing for food and sleeping in dark alleys. Now, it’s a celebrity, the kind who is famous for being famous. The kind whose face and body parts are plastered on every magazine in the checkout counter and who keeps appearing on the front pages of newspapers who should know better.

That’s why I have f-word fatigue. Every other noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, and interjection is being replaced by some form of this word. (Thankfully, no one uses it as a preposition or conjunction yet, but please keep this a secret, or it might change.)

In the future, will we all speak F, formerly known as English? Or as they say in F: In the f, will f all f F, f-ly f-ed as English? This will cause people to run around saying WTF all the time, much like they do already. Maybe the future is already here and I just need new glasses.

Over half a million words are languishing in dictionaries, waiting for someone to adopt them. Do your part, take some home, put those puppies on a leash, and let them chew somebody’s leg or pee on their shoes. Or take pictures of them and post them on the internet. The f-word is a dog that has had its day. It’s time to put it down.

The other day, in the car with the offspring of my offspring… (Kind reader, please step over here for a minute. Since the last offspring no longer lives at home, should we be saying “offsprung” instead? I thought so.)

The other day, in the car with the offspring of my offsprung, the small one said, “Grandma, look, there’s a Taurus.” All I could see were a bunch of those metal things on wheels that keep getting in my way.

“Over there,” the child pointed. And sure enough, after I pulled up close enough, I saw the word Taurus branded on its rump. (Did I tell you I’m from Texas?)

This small child, who cannot read yet, can point out a Taurus, a Mazda, a Supra, a Jeep Cherokee, and a Blazer. Just by looking! See what I mean about the genius part?

Once when I took my car in for some repairs, the man at the counter asked me what kind of car I drove. I thought it was a trick question. I do not follow my car to work, so I am not familiar with what is written on the back of it. I said, “I think it’s a Buick,” but that didn’t sound right. Then I said, “I think it’s in the same family as the Grand Am, but it is not a Grand Am.” He looked at me strangely and said, “That’s okay, lady. I’ll go outside and look.”

I have only three questions when it comes to cars:

Does this car make me look fat?

Does it have a heater?

Does it have an air conditioner?

Does it have a radio?

Okay, that’s four questions, but the first one goes without saying, right.